1. Technical Field
The present invention relates generally to agricultural implements associated with crop, seed, or granular commodity collection and transportation such as commodity wagons, gravity boxes, and/or grain wagons and/or carts.
2. Background Art
Commonly, devices such as harvesters or combines collect granular products such as seeds, beans, corn, etc., from fields when such products are ready for harvest. Such machines can be configured to separate the commodity intended to be collected from the remainder of the plant material associated with generating the commodity. Such machines also commonly have limited on-board storage associated with collection or harvest of the pertinent commodity. To improve harvest efficiency, such machines commonly cooperate with ancillary vehicles, such as commodity wagons, grain wagons, or grain carts that are configured to receive the harvested commodity without unduly interfering with harvest operation and/or continued operation of the harvester. Grain carts are also commonly configured to facilitate transport of the commodity to storage or use destinations. The use or storage locations are frequently remote from the fields associated with the harvest operation.
Such transport vehicles are commonly configured for both on and off-road operations and can be configured to cooperate with the harvester during concurrent or intermittent suspension operation of the harvester. That is, some such vehicles require suspension of the harvest operation to effectuate the transfer of the commodity from the harvester to the transport vehicle whereas other transport vehicles will tolerate continued operation of the harvester but periodically only at somewhat slower harvest operation speeds during the commodity transfer activities. Additionally, many transport vehicle, whether utilized during or upon suspension of the harvest operation, require a generally parallel association of the transport vehicle relative to the harvester. Such an orientation of the transport vehicle relative to the harvester commonly requires that at least two passes of the harvester be completed prior to association of the transport vehicle relative to the harvester for the transfer operation to mitigate damage to adjacent un-harvested crops.
Commonly, even two adjacent passes of the harvester clears a crop area that allows only limited manipulation of the commodity wagon and its associated tow vehicle. That is, the crop area cleared by even two adjacent passes of the harvester is frequently insufficient to clear an area of crop sufficient to tolerate turning around of the transport vehicle without considerable manipulation of the transport or tow vehicle and the grain cart without travelling into areas of the field associated with unharvested crop. The movement of the transport vehicle and associated tow vehicle through unharvested areas of a field can detrimentally affect crop yield rates via damage to unharvested standing crops and the inability of the harvester to adequately collect the granular commodity for the damaged crop areas.
Therefore, there is a need for a commodity transport vehicle, grain cart, or wagon that is configured to improve efficient utilization of a harvester, efficient, and judicious communication of the harvested commodity between the harvester and the transport vehicle, provides a variable footprint association of the commodity transport vehicle relative to the harvester, allows versatile positional association of the grain cart relative to a harvester, and facilitates convenient transport of the grain cart, and commodity transported therein, between locations associated with harvesting the commodity and the remote storage or use of the harvest.